Googlebot’s renderer evolves over time, the company says, and right now it renders pages more like Chrome than Safari. Changing the smartphone user-agent should have no affect on roughly 99% of sites.

The change will only have an affect on sites that specifically looks for a particular Googlebot user-agent string, which is not recommended in the first place. Implementing user-agent sniffing for Googlebot is considered to be a form of cloaking, whereas guidelines state Googlebot should be treated like any other browser.

Google’s Fetch and Render tool in Search Console has been updated with the new user-agent string. You’ll know for sure if your site is affected by the user-agent change by running it though that tool. You can also check by going into the Developer Tools on your browser and changing the user-agent string (for example, via Chrome Device Mode).